Do you like your job?

Someone asked me the other day, if I liked my job. I took a breath and I thought about it for a moment. And then a moment later I answered with my standard response about the highs and lows and ups and downs of life as a midwife.

A few days went by, but I couldn’t shake this question from my head. It’s a question that I’ve been asked many times before, but this time I kept thinking about it, and replaying my answer. I felt dissatisfied, like I hadn’t done it justice. It lingered in my mind, and I knew that I’d answered it half-heartedly. Not that the person who had asked me was bothered. My answer had served the purpose in the moment, and to them I had answered the question. But for me, I knew that I hadn’t answered it from my heart. Anyone who knows anything about birth, or about being a midwife, knows that you cannot do it half-heartedly. Either you are in, or you are out. There is no place in the middle (or if you are hanging out in the middle, you probably need to be out).

Fast forward a few days and I am sitting at BINI Birth waiting for Gena Kirby to begin her Rebozo workshop (which deserves a whole new other post), wondering what the next few hours were about to bring. 6 hours later and I am sitting in tears, in complete awe of this woman, and I find that I have all the answers I will ever need to that question I’d been sitting with all week.

Over those 6 hours, I’d forgotten about any other part of my job that brought me down. Any negativity towards it had completely left my body. All I was left with was this raw realization, and this complete clarity as to why exactly I love my job. The workshop was amazing for so many reasons, but in Gena’s own words, ‘it’s not all about the robozo’. For me, it’s not even all about the birth. What stood out to me today, as if in bold neon letters above my head, is that, ‘it’s all about the journey’. I knew this already, but somehow what I experienced over those 6 hours, just reaffirmed it on such a deep level for me. It reinforced my belief that life is a journey, not a destination. It doesn’t matter where you go, or what turns you make, or even where you end up. It’s about how you feel in that moment in your life. In my job I get to watch peoples’ worlds unfold. I get to witness their hearts grow and open. I get to touch someone else’s version of love. I get welcomed in to these precious moments in their lives where everything changes. I get to be a apart of this rite of passage in to womanhood. I get to walk side by side with these women, along the well trodden path to motherhood. And to me, that is everything.